World of Warcraft's new expansion sales did not meet expectations

Lazard Capital Markets analyst Atul Bagga said that even if the estimate did not take into account the online download of Mists of Pandaria, the expansion of the digital version would basically not make up for the severe decline in sales.

World of Warcraft recently launched its latest extension, called Mists of Pandaria. Lazard Capital Markets forecasts and analyzes this expansions' sales volume according to market conditions. The company's forecast results show that the sales of Mists of Pandaria through retailer channels are about 600,000 to 700,000. This data does not include online Users who purchased and downloaded. Analysts believe that as the fourth expansion of the most successful MMORPG, Mists of Pandaria does not seem to leave a good impression on players, causing its sales to lag far behind other expansions in the series.

Lazard Capital Markets analyst Atul Bagga said that even if the estimate did not take into account the online download of Mists of Pandaria, the expansion of the digital version would basically not make up for the severe decline in sales. It is worth mentioning that the Burning Crusade, the first World of Warcraft extension released by Blizzard in 2007, sold 2.4 million Classic WOW Gold copies, and the second extension was named Wrath of the Lich King, this extension was considered the best expansion in the series by all, and sold 2.8 million copies on the day of release. Cataclysm is the third expansion of World of Warcraft launched by Blizzard in 2010. Although not favored by most players, it still sold 3.3 million copies in the first 24 hours. Now, the release of Mists of Pandaria may reduce that number by about 60%, which is a serious setback for Blizzard. Whenever I need to use WOW Classic Gold in the game, I always think of ZZWOW, where I can buy cheap and secure WOW Classic Gold. If you need it, you can visit ZZWOW's official website.

Since World of Warcraft's debut in 2004, he has been the king of the MMORPG field, setting the benchmark for other similar games. But as a game profitable through subscription mode, World of Warcraft has encountered increasing resistance over the years, and even started to regress. The pinnacle of World of Warcraft was in 2010, during which time the game had more than 12 million active users worldwide. But since then, that number has continued to fall, and has recently dropped to 9.1 million. In this regard, Blizzard president Mike Morhaime analyzes that this situation is mainly due to the expansion has entered the end stage, and the release of Diablo III has attracted the attention of a considerable number of players, which has also led to the Vanilla WOW Gold loss of players. They have anticipated this trend.

The market and users seem to be creating a bigger dilemma for MMORPGs. Many of the same type of games have been shifted to free-to-play models and trying to make profits by selling items in-game. While Blizzard does not intend to do so, they do not seem to want to compromise to the market and the dilemma. But they have made some changes in the basic game: players can now experience the initial content of World of Warcraft for free, but their area of ​​activity is limited to level 20.